Study Group has become a founding member of Exporting Education UK (ExEd)

19 March 2013

The group currently consists of 24 members, who cover the full range of education from Pre-preps, Prep schools, High Schools, Sixth Form Colleges, FE & HE colleges, to Professional Colleges and Education Publishers.

The group has a membership of UK-based companies and organisations involved in education as an export who have come together to promote the value of the sector to UK plc and its contribution to the UK’s long term competitiveness in the global economy. All have a common interest in the export of quality education in the UK- both export of services and the education of international students in the UK. The group is known as ExEd for short.

Education exports are worth over £14 billion to the UK economy and have the potential for year on year growth. The founding members believe that there is a need for all parts of the sector to work more closely together to promote the contribution of education exports to politicians, policy makers and the media. This is an umbrella group which for the first time can represent the common interests of all parts of the sector and although Universities UK (the trade body representing all UK universities) has not yet joined, they are supportive of the group.

In addressing the challenges of current UK government policy on net migration and the treatment of valuable international students as an immigration problem, the sector has not been well served in the past years by its fractured nature, all segments of which have made representations, lobbied and made their arguments, but only for their own particular area of the sector. By bringing together the disparate segments of the sector to present a cohesive and consolidated view, we believe that we have a better chance of influencing the decision makers in government, who thus far have been happy to put political considerations ahead of the economic growth, jobs and soft power that export education delivers for the UK. Out of all the sectors of potential growth for UK plc, export of education surely has the greatest potential, not only for economic benefit and new jobs across the regions but also for the continuation of the UK's soft power- diplomatically, culturally and commercially and yet also, by forging better understanding and communication, it can also potentially bring about a better world.